I like smarty but it can be a memory hog, and 1 out of 2 php coders seems to dislike it (or any tpl system); so that might be a tough sell. Been looking at php-only solutions and savant looked interesting; any specific thoughts about it?

I've actually been looking at OCP again recently, though only on my localbox. I quite like it but the admin area seems a little slow to me, though it could be because of the large amount of data on the pages. I had been thinking about checking into the built in *nuke and phpBB importer to see what happens but last time I tried the phpBB 2.x importer I couldn't get it working properly and gave up due to time pressures. Maybe this time I'll have more luck

@spastic I liked Savant for its minimalistic approach it is way faster than Smarty I feel and very easy to learn. If you've ever had to template for wordpress you'll feel right at home.

@Guardian Yes ocPortal is a little slower I find sometimes but there is definitely a lot going on both front and backend. As for the importers yes during building the new one I have seen a lot of issues with the old phpbb and nuke ones because the nuke one is for 6.5 and for the phpbb it doesn't use the nuke prefix and table structure it uses the phpbb standalone. My RN convertor will do ALMOST EVERYTHING. From Banners, Polls and Forums and Users as well as News Downloads Reviews Links Calendar etc. There might be a few things to do manually when done but for the most part an RN site is expected to be a straightforward upgrade without too much rebuilding needed done except for maybe custom or addon modules. When it is ready perhaps you can beta it for me?

Actually Guardian Maybe I can pick your brain for the NukeSEO portion of it? I need to wrap my head around your Metadata storage system so I can import all that too as ocPortal supports custom keywords per content etc as well. I'll pop to your site and ask there.

duck, hopefully my info on nukeSEO DH was helpful. On some Joomla sites I support, I've noticed that META tags are maintained at the content level, but it doesn't appear to auto-generate them based on the content or allow overrides across different levels like nukeSEO DH. How does ocPortal handle that?

I looked at the major information pages for ocPortal, and, though it advertises solid functionality, I'm curious about your long-term experiences with it wrt support and upgrades, especially in light of many of the comments in this discussion.

For example, if a major release impacts themes (and, presumably, data, addons, etc.) significantly, even a free CMS can be quite expensive in terms of time and effort to upgrade to the latest and greatest. As a webmaster for several sites, I see the RN upgrade process - and support for older stuff - as very significant. Have you been through a major upgrade with ocportal yet? If so, what was your experience?

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@kguske ocPortal does it dynamically on the content level as well as provide for overide functionality. You can also optionally allow users (groups) to manage their own tags as well as code validation at the time of content submittal.

As for my experiences with the sytem I have only started using it last fall and in the time I have started using it it has already went through 4 version upgrades (minor from 7.1 when I started to 7.5) but each upgrade has been seemless without issue. Installation system the have can install to your server from scratch directly from their site if you provide FTP details and for upgrades you can pick ANY previous version of ocPortal and choose what to upgrade to and it builds you a custom upgrade package just for you. So for instance you could jum from 7.1 to 7.5 directly. They have a Major upgrade to version 8 comming out soon so I'll let you know if I have issues with that upgrade but I highly doubt it.

As for themes and Addons you can install directly from within your admin section of your site you can browse all themes add-ons in the repository and click to install automatically from your website. It even shows you all files that will be installed or changed before installation so you can double check before you do something disaasterous if you like.

The system uses an overide system so if you want to modify something yourself you make a copy of the original sorce file and make your changes and save it in a folder prefixed custom (like for sources custom_sources) so when you upgrade the core your modifications aren't changed. Even the theming system works this way so you can change certain blocks or containers etc for different sections of the site (even CSS for that matter works like that too) everything is extensible. Whereever you've created a "custom" something it uses that if not it uses original sources. Of course if there is a major major core change that does not mean you might not still experience some issues with something custom you've done but the good news is all your code will be untouched and still there.

The one downside to ocPortal I am not crazy about but is a necessary eveil for the freedom and power it provides is it is quite complex for first use. Don't get me wrong some of the basics are easy, well actually most stuff is easy but it just takes time to learn all the features and where to find some of them. The use their own bbcode like forum and posting languages if you like called comcode but it is extremely rich in comparison to bbcode and it even allows for the inclusion of blocks and things you'd normally see on a content page included inline in a forum or news post etc.

The also have a scripting system for the template system for modifying your output so for instance you can add specific view instructions for a particular block if you want based on things like The user group someone belongs to or heck whatever else you might want like the time of day whatever. Heck if you wanted you could take a player of the month block and check if the user being outputted belongs to the "Clan" group and if so add your Clan Tag to the front of their name automatically or something like that and it is all handled right there in the block template. You could also utilize global variables if you wanted like "Sitename" or "Slogan" or what have you (there are lots of useful ones). Anyway as I say I love it. The learning curve is a little slower than "Nuke" but once you learn it you will start to make up any lost time with the savings you get in doing new stuff within a framework instead of having to code everything from scratch everytime.

etc...
This would speed up greatly modules or blocks creations and allow for a faster learning curve and ofc powercreation. Implement a bit of MVC ( without the M for now)

And i think it would be easier than try to implement directly a complex templating architecture to nuke disbanding any compatibility with older themes.

@MonTego and @dev Furthermore , why not try to build a separate API for user managements and groups and try to port it to common used modules/blocks ?

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@Elderado Yes a more MVC approach like ocPortal does would be nice indeed and to be honest much needed. I much prefer Kohana or YII as frameworks go and would love a proper CMS built out of one of those 2 as well. YII is very cool as it even has an auto build module so to speak whereby you can just build the DB table and point the system at it and it builds you an Add/Edit/List set of pages for you. Quite sweet for a basic module in seconds.

As for your comment about changing the templating sytem because of fear of losing compatiblity of themes already out there I strongly disagree. Firstly you can't have an MVC approach if there is no V which nukes themeing sytem doesn't have. The V in MVC is probably the most important aspect actually. Also if you have a good templating system converting any Nuke theme should be a breeze. Far more easy than making a new (or converting for that matter) theme from scratch for nuke.

Here are a couple video's on making a theme for ocPortal which can show you that even new designers can probably learn and create new themes much easier than they would in Nuke.

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Heck a system like ocPortal even has a themeing wizard built in whereby a user can pick a seed color for their website and it automatically rebuilds the default theme with totally new colors and images in it. Anybody can do this with a couple clicks of a mouse they don't even need to know how to code html never mind php. Theme images can be easily replaced in the same fashion from the admin panel.

Here is one more video on the fron't page of ttheir website which shows a guy setting up a whole new site (an alien scifi community site) with a new theme colors etc in 40 minutes. Of course that would need an experienced user with the system for you to do it that fast but it shows the simplicity of it fairly well.

Scroll down near the bottom for the video.

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